At a startup, "creative director" is a polite word for everything.

At a big company, creative director is a defined role. At a startup it's a polite word for everything. One morning it's brand strategy with the founders. By afternoon it's resizing a banner because a deadline moved.

The skill isn't any single craft. It's switching gears fast without dropping the bar. The banner has to be as considered as the strategy, because at a small company everything ships under the same name, and the name is still being built.

It's exhausting and it's the best training there is. You learn how the whole machine fits together, and you stop pretending strategy and execution are different jobs. At that scale, they're the same one.